


Ferris Wheel

by RuGrimm



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Black & White | Pokemon Black and White Versions
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Growing Old, Growing Old Together, Hospitals, Old Age, Sad, Sorry Not Sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:29:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22731019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RuGrimm/pseuds/RuGrimm
Summary: As the ferris wheel turns off for the night in the city of Nimbasa, N reminisces on their journey to this room and wonders whether or not there’s a formula for the amount of happiness someone’s allowed to have in life.
Relationships: N | Natural Harmonia Gropius/Touko | Hilda
Comments: 7
Kudos: 39





	Ferris Wheel

A dim glow settles over the ward as sleep pulls the blanket over the day’s excitement. In the proverbial, soft gloom, nurses shuffle about their routines--clicking keyboards and a coffee machine. Most visitors have already taken leave, and the almost-always running TV’s have finally shut off for the night. Lights are switched off, save for the buzzing fluorescent bulbs in the main room and the occasional lamp in patient rooms. There’s a stale sterility to the air, save for the coffee, and to anyone unaccustomed to the smell, it would be comparable to an old-folks home doused in bleach. On walls of cream, the glow catches on cheaply printed paintings, and the passing shadows of the guardian angels presiding over this melancholy add personality to the landscapes. 

In the corner of the ward’s main room, bubbles rise in their trapping confines. They reach the top. They burst. Silent. From top to bottom. Inside and out. 

N’s shaking hand holds a paper cup beneath the nozzle of the water dispenser. He watches the water gather until it reaches halfway, and then he reaches to shut it off. By the time his fumbling fingers manage to knock the knob back, the cup is dangerously full. Had he been much younger, one would have taken his shuffling feet (wrapped in house slippers) as a caution against spilling his drink. Arthritis is a pain. 

The many years might have been kind to him, but it was the travail that served as the gravity that pulled his skin in waves toward the center of the whirlpool in his chest. His knees crackle whenever he tries to lift his foot for a proper step. He avoids walking whenever possible, and his slippers make it easier to glide across the tiled floors. 

He nods to the nurse at the desk as he passes by, and she offers him a mute smile in return--a smile that doesn’t hide the pity in her eyes. 

Walking to the room on the far left--one of the few with the lamp still on--he closes the door the door behind him and sets his cup down on the end table nearest the bed. There’s already a chair pulled up. He sits down. 

“Sorry to keep you waiting…” He uses both hands to pick his cup up again. The sloshing liquid dribbles down the white sides to his fingers, and he ignores them as he presses the edge to his chapped lips. Even water can’t ease the choking sensation he gets when he sits in this room. 

When he sets the cup back down, a puddle gathering beneath it, he manages to clear his throat. His hands ball in his sweatpants. He can’t look at her. His eyes run for the window, but she’s there too. 

Flowers and get-well cards line the sill as a testament to the long stay. A deflating balloon hangs midair over a chansey doll, the string held in the plushie’s hand. Beside it: a picture frame. She’s there within a polygon, youth preserved under glass. He’s there too. And the ferris wheel. 

Their lives began the moment they stepped on that wheel together. They rose. He proposed. They got higher still. The adventure of life never seemed dizzying from that height. 

He rises from his chair, shuffling over to the window and pausing in front of the photograph. Hands brush the smooth, transparent surface and over her face. Eyes are burning, lungs closing. There are no tears left to cry. 

N reaches up to the latch of the window and opens it, gazing out over Nimbasa. Fitting, so he thinks, that the end would come where it began. Even at this time, the city is still alive (as it always is). In the distance, there’s the theme park. Spotlights dance across the sky, but the stars shy from center stage. Beyond the excitement, the lights of the towering ferris wheel seem unremarkable in comparison to the craze. It’s quiet, still as a backdrop. The ride stands ignored by the masses, acknowledged, yet rarely appreciated. 

_She’s beautiful._

When he turns his gaze back to the picture, he wonders whether or not there’s a formula for the amount of happiness someone’s allowed to have in life. 

The cards on the sill are all from her fans. Like any celebrity, the gifts and well-wishes she’s received are aplenty. At the news of the former Unova Champion’s condition, people from around the world have become invested in their private lives. Social media is as it always has been: a haven for prying eyes and brown noses. N stopped turning on the TV weeks ago. People are too complicated. 

Except her. He’s never had problems understanding her. Even when they were at odds, it was never hard to discern her thoughts or intentions. She was the Hero of Truth for a reason. He was the complicated one. She always was the one to point it out--and begrudgingly, too quick about it. 

Turning from the window, he looks at his hands as he trudges back to his seat. 

Don’t look at the bed. Don’t listen to the machines. 

Closing his eyes, he slouches over his knees and rests his arms on the stark white sheets. His wrinkled palms instinctively reach for the cold, bony hand resting nearby. Pursing his lips, he finds as much comfort in her touch as he does resentment. The touch is too real. He can’t pretend her hand doesn’t exist or that it isn’t in his. 

When he opens his eyes and gazes through the watery film, he squeezes her hand and looks to that beautiful face. Though her eyes are closed, he believes she knows he’s there. It’s more a feeling than a fact, but he wasn’t a hero of truth. 

The Champion of Unova--a champion above all others, in his eyes--lays before him, and to him, she is the truth he cannot deny. So beautiful...so beyond his worth, the bringer of all the happiness in his long life. How...how could he have deserved someone like her? 

~~She was the best~~.

_She is the best._

She is the best that humanity could have offered him, and she is so much more. 

Her face may be wrinkled, slack with time. Her hair may thin and wispy against her head. Her skin may be blotched with age spots. She may not be able to hear 75% of the things he says anymore. She may not be able to eat candy, go on long walks, or take part in intense pokémon battles like she used to. And that’s okay. 

In his formulas, those things never outweigh the love he feels for her. 

He looks over to the ferris wheel through the window, watching as the wheel begins to finally move and the top cart begins to lower to the horizon. Her breath comes in short, dispersed gasps. He tries not to hear it. 

_“It’s almost time.”_

Slowly, with every crackle, he stands and leans over the bed. It’s an effort to get himself on the mattress. His muscles and bones protest his movements, but he ignores their cries. Wrapping his arm over her thin, frail body, he rests his chin over her head and strokes her bare arm with a thumb. 

He can feel the faint warmth through his shirt, and he clings to that because he can’t cling to her. 

It’s becoming hard to breathe for both of them. 

“I love you,” he gasps, lowering his head to press a kiss to her scalp. She smells like sterile soap and joint cream. “Please don’t leave me...Please…” 

His chest rises and falls to make up for her lacking one. The shaking in his hands has become more apparent, and he fights the lurching hiccups that threaten to surface as sobs the more time disperses between each breath. Fighting the burning sensation, he closes his throat to keep any sound from escaping. 

Is there an equation to turn back time? 

He looks up at that ferris wheel as it stops at the bottom, and the piercing shrill in his ears are muted by grief and time alike. 

“It’s time to get off, Touko…” 

His voice cracks, finally losing the battle. Tears fall like the aftermath of a rain dance, and there’s no breath to interlude. She’s limp in his arms as he pulls her to his chest, head against his heart, deep sobs shaking their bodies. 

The lights of the wheel turn off for the long night. 


End file.
